hands

[CvdC]

I found this picture on the www.
I don't know what they are, some sort of staff with hand which has some significance or another.
But I thought this would be a good pattern for a Punch and Judy puppet hand.

[Chris]

I've seen those before Chris, or something very like them. It's a "hand and heart" staff of ceremonial use in the early days of the Oddfellows - a friendly society which started in the North of England in Victorian Times but which claims, like the Freemasons, to originate in the Craft Guilds of the Middle Ages. It was quite big in the Northern Industrial Towns of my youth. It still carries on, and there are Oddfellows Halls in many towns and cities.

[Peter]

I did a talk and show for the Ipswich Oddfellows recently.
Very nice people, and I have to say that I've met odder (you know who you are!).